Saturday, June 04, 2011

We saw another Art Centre 'D' in town with a lot of kids going in and out everyday and we decided to take look. Angel says she wants to join the ballet lessons but they were only accepting kids 5 years old for ballet lessons.

*For that Angel has been eating 'more' veggies lately because she said she wants to be 5 year old fast! :P*

They were required to decorate their own kites and when she knows what's she's gonna do for the day, she was super excited!

Only 1 other boy (also new member) is joining her kite making class that day. Although we were given the chances to see Angel doing her art work in her class but she keeps turning around to look at me not paying attention to her teacher so I decided to wait outside the classroom , 'listening' to how her class was being conducted.

She can't wait to show me her first kite and say, "妈妈，你看！我‘发’（画）的 kite！" (Mommy, see the kite I have drawn) Her mandarin has improved tremendously over the months and she will call me "妈妈" in front of her 'Chinese' friends and teachers, instead of calling me Mommy *laugh* Sometimes I will be like "Who is mama ... oh, it's me!!" So not use to being call Mama in mandarin :P

She decorated her kites full of BALLS! Colourful balls (so irregularly shaped balls?? hehehehe) in the park with some flowers on the ground. Of course, not missing all the smiley faces again ^_^ First time I saw her do her colouring so neatly and colourfully.

Her 2nd lesson

They put her into the normal drawing classes together with the other kids who are 5 years old and she was very excited to see so many friends in her class. I waited for her outside the classroom and I can hear her loud voice saying, "我！我！我！我！”（me!me!me!）whenever teacher asking the kids to do/ perform something ^_^

I managed to capture some precious pictures of my little girl when one of her classmates went to the toilet who forgot to close the classroom door :P :P All of the kids were soooooo cute wearing their little apron doing the art work :)

After the class ended, she opened the door, walked pass me without even say hi to her own mom *Sigh! Shake head* and chasing behind her little friends saying, "我要洗手！我要洗手！'洗手'在那里？"（ I want to wash my hand and where is the wash area?）I am glad that she could communicate with the little kids more and more now ^_^

When daddy wants to help her, she asked daddy to stay away and tell daddy, "No ... I want to wash my hand ALL BY MYSELF!" Angel always has been a very independent girl since very young. But daddy must be feeling a little disappointed while watching the rest of the kids next to our girl who let their parents 'having the honour' to wash their little one's hand but him. *smile* Poor daddy~~~.

Presenting her art work! According to her teacher, she did almost all of her drawings and cutting all by herself because she refused the teacher to help her out *hhmmm ... that's her* but that was indeed a very pretty piece of work :) I am so proud of her :)

Some drawings by her classmates and the drawings all look so cute and naive! I just love each and every one of the drawings so much :) It put smiles on my face :) Some young kids were doing the pottery work in the other classroom too.

The next day, I asked Angel to draw Mommy and that's what she drew. No more 'stick man/woman' and she starts drawing fingers and eyes with eyes lashes and flowers with leaves. A good improvement isn't it?

Most importantly is, Angel loves her lesson so much. But after a month of trial classes, somehow I find the lesson is a bit ...... too 'formal', as formal as those we used to attend during our primary school years? But the drawings from the kids were so cute!!!!

I did talk to the teachers about my concern and the teacher ensured me that they won't teaches the kids how to draw but will 'guide' them instead. However, I am still in a dilemma whether I should put such lesson on hold until she is a few years older as I read somewhere from the book that such lesson would kill a young kid's natural creativity and being mould into one of the same kind?

Friday, June 03, 2011

Some of the lightings in our house started playing tricks on us. That day when I am doing my readings in the living room, suddenly the lights went off and it really gave me a shock staying in the total darkness. The problems seem to be persistent even after a light bulb changed. I guess it's a good reason for me to change some of the lighting fixtures around the house as they looks kind of worn out especially the wall lighting in the living hall. Should I get a single or double wall sconces this round? They all looks so beautiful.

We have plans to buy a few more standing lamps for the reading room and the dinning area too. I find that by adding a few more lightings around the house does makes a great difference in the total ambience without having to actually doing interior or renovating work in order to get the total new look and feel. I truly believe that a few good lightings placed in the appropriate places really make such great difference for the house. It not only highlights some dull corners of the rooms which we never pay attention to before, but also make good use of some 'abandon' place which previously looks so unattractive.

Too bad that we don't have a garden outside the house. If we do, I few of the landscape lightings will absolutely looks perfect. However, we do have plans to replace our current outdoor ceiling lights to a more contemporary type of lamps. No matter what choices we made, energy saving is the main concern as these lightings would be switched on for long hours during the nights. I am glad that most of such outdoor lighting fixtures do come with an energy savings options. Hence I gets to enjoy the brightness and beautiful mood created by these lightings and yet, do not need to worry about paying high electrical bills ^_^